Journalists at the Olympic Games 2008 in Peking report that they do not have unrestricted Internet access. The GPL'd OpenVPN software can easily work around censorship of this kind.

IOC President Jacques Rogge recently backpedaled under heavy fire when it became known that the promise of “unrestricted” Internet access for the press has not been kept. Users of free software can only shake their heads at the turbulence this has caused, because software such as OpenVPN will tunnel firewalls like China's "Great Firewall" without any trouble.

Related content

Firewalls sometimes prohibit everything but everyday surfing, leaving users with no hope of running IRC or streaming servers through the firewall, unless they use a virtual private networking tool like OpenVPN.

Wireless networks are practical but dangerous at the same time.WEP encryption is unlikely to stop an attacker. But help is at hand in the form of add-on security measures such as an encrypted OpenVPN tunnel.